Naming conventions

Published March 13, 2013

In post production almost everyone how to properly name and label tracks, organise data. But in my experience, in music production it’s a big hotchpotch. Almost everyone has a “well working” method which is, of course, not compatible or decipherable with any other place. Although there’s many recommendations all around the internet, this easy task, to reasonably name tracks, seems to be a hard one.

How to do it

Or first things first, how NOT to do it. Do NOT work out some code scheme. Most likely no one else in the whole world will know what the brand new code system means. Not to mention that we really don’t need any other codes, we have enough of them. Don’t leave the default names there, which can be audio1, etc. If you let this happen, you’ll end up with huge amount of audio files without any meaningful information.

Instead of the special codes I recommend a very easy, foolproof method: name the tracks with numbers-names. For example: 01 Kick.

If the track count is high, let’s say above 99 or a hundred, than start with 001 so that the file list will be in order, you can even drag and drop the file from the finder window. The main thing is to include the track number as it can tremendously help us to identify it’s real position in the track list. The other benefit is the same as above with the finder example. You just import the files into Pro Tools or into your choice of DAW and they will correctly line up without the need to organise them.

It seems trivial, but still, the daily practice shows that very few actually care about this. And believe me, sorting-listening-organising a huge multitrack project is not fun.